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rmbunnie · 10 months ago

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Another little inconsequential red hood thing and I'll admit that I'm decently biased but it irks me to see the whole "Jason can't shut up about his death/he makes his death everyone else's problem" take really frequently because he simply does not do that enough for it to be a thing in like any actual Red Hood story.

It's a thing you see sometimes in modern annuals/comics with large casts, particularly if a writer doesn't seem super confident with writing all of the characters that they're working with or if he's just a background character in this one, because with comics it's quicker to reduce a character to recognizable landmarks than to try and work out a whole new complex voice if you don't really need to, so it's tire iron, Jane Austen, Joker, and death, and it's all written out in dialogue because every character in a group event can't have their own internal monologue, but like. That's pretty much it. UTRH is the establishing event for Jason Todd post death so of course a lot of it is about his death, although it's arguably about the lack of response to his death more than his death itself, and he certainly makes it Bruce's issue but one beef doesn't make a trend. Plus if his death is anyone's issue beyond his own Bruce and Joker are like the number one guys whose issue it is. He THINKS about his death a ton in Lost Days, but it doesn't really reflect externally on any of his interactions besides with Joker, which again, that's justified and relevant beef. Teen Titans 29 is more about his place in the hero community/feeling like he was an outsider even before the bomb/Tim being the new robin than about his death, and side note, that being counted as an attempt on Tim's life also bugs me. He beat him up and then left of his own volition. That's not an assassination attempt its called a fight, albeit a sneaky and unfair one. But anyways. I can't speak on Battle for the Cowl because i haven't read it, both that and Batman and Robin 2009 don't really compel me, but it's entirely possible that's an outlier to my point seeing as I kinda sorta haven't read it and don't care to lmao. Even New 52 (although HIGHLY unpopular) and Rebirth/Dawn of DC/Whatever we're doing now Red Hood content don't really have him talking to people about it besides the occasional little quips. He might make stances that were developed because of his death other people's problem, like in the Mia Dearden Green Arrow situation with the "getting involved in other people's business" issue, but acting like he makes specifically his death everyone else's problem is ignoring all of the perfectly valid actually canon things he makes other people's problem. Most of the unpleasant traits he brings to the table are a result of his death and the sense of abandonment and betrayal that came with it, but that doesn't mean he's bringing his death into it when he acts unpleasantly any more than he's bringing his birth into it when he shows up in the first place. The consequences do not equal the event. All this to say it's irritating when people say the character is grating because he doesn't stop whining about his death when that kinda just indicates to me that they're working off fanon based on fanon based on kinda mid batman annual.

#i'm probs going to take a break from jasonposting for a while because it kinda seems like im beating a dead horse lmao #anyone else reading dawn of dc green arrow? because i find it delightful #maybe ill start oliverposting did you ever think of that?#they're kinda pushing amanda waller REALLY hard like she is in EVERYTHING rn but whatever it's not messing it up too bad for me #i like the art style and also seeing roy in his silly little outfit with his silly little hairstyle #i should really get into nightwing more #i'm fairly into modern damian content i'd say #LOVING the new boy wonder issue one can't wait for june 4 #jason todd #red hood #dc comics #on the topic of writing large casts of characters well #i don't like to publicly speak bad of specific writers and artists as a whole unless they've actually done something real life bad #because my expectations and how much they were or were not met is my own business #but i am not fond of how tom king writes large groups #i haven't forgotten that alternate universe thing tom. it was not good tom #i remember the heroes in crisis confessions and i found them underwhelming at best

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presiding · 7 months ago

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I'm not a new follower and I've been here long enough but i do have a relatively bad memory

So I've wanted to ask, what's your opinion on "Dishonored: death of the outsider"?

Right now I'm replaying Dishonored games not in the release order, i already finished DH2 and started Daud dlcs. Maybe I'll go for vanilla DH later

But thoughts about going through death of the outsider again makes me feel something that i can't explain... 😬

It has some interesting ideas but antagonists are underused. Locations repeat a lot. And Billie herself deserved SO much better than whatever is going on with her character

I'm genuinely debating if i should revisit *this* one or pretend that DH2 is the last game. I know that some people love DOTO but i can't find strength in me

love to chat about death of the outsider, ty for the ask!

i feel your pain. it's the one game i struggle to revisit. but! i was thinking about your points and how DotO has the feel of budget cuts.

it's been about a year since my last DotO post - so, essay time -

a measured response to common DotO criticisms

(the thousand bugs of dishonored 2 I had borne as I best could, but when doto ventured upon sidelining billie and retconning daud's arc I vowed revenge*

*can't resist a cask of amontillado joke

criticism is easy and creation is hard, so, if this isn't the type of response you wanted, you can read my other DotO posts:

how i'd write death of the outsider

that post i did after trying to play doto a third time and couldn't make it past the opening scene (you might like my tags on this re: your comment "makes me feel something i can't explain")

billie lurk as a nonprotagonist & misogynoir (more on this below...)

gonna leapfrog off your comments cause I agree!

antagonists are underused/locations repeat a lot.

who is steering the boat?

let's start up at the top; everything stems from there.

DotO was caught up in ownership/transition issues. here's an article about harvey smith and raphael colantanio at that time. if you didnt know, colantonio is the main founder of arkane (semi-related but just for fun look his appearance up then go through arkane's protags and tell me what you notice...).

quote from harvey smith re: DotO -

“Then, just as I move back, [Colantonio is] announcing that he’s leaving. Going forward, I’ll focus more and more on the Austin studio and what we’re going to do there. Death of the Outsider is my wrapping up with the guys in Lyon – the first half of that we planned together while I was living there, but the second half was worked on while I was living in Austin. I’ve been communicating with them through video conferences and stuff, so they carry a lot of the load of the second half of it.”

so the founder jumped ship and the co-creative director has to step away from his usual position (over to sinking ship Austin). meanwhile, DotO is still in development. i'm a big believer in people making art, and not companies (even in this article Smith acknowledges much of their "secret sauce" can be traceable to specific devs but i digress)

$$$ kaching - some speculation

on the note of founders - past this point in arkane's history (ie. the main founder stepping back), arkane would have been being primed for sale. this translates to high scrutiny on project expenditure (such as hiring cheaper early career staff, hiring less workers, denying your best staff raises causing them to leave and hiring cheaper workers in their place, etc) to make the company's EBITDA look more appealing to buyers (briefly, its the piece of paper that proves you're profitable). based on speculative timelines, from a purely $ perspective within the first year of dh2 being released is when you'd be looking to slim down your capitalised expenditure (aka: cutting staff while the revenue is at a peak to make number go brr and make your company look like a better investment) because to maximise the profit of a company's sale, you really have a great track record for a few years.

this is purely speculation based on timelines. companies are very careful to hide when they're doing this, ideally they want ~3 years of a great track record (and staff that will keep working their hardest).

big goals and no money

DotO was meant to be a two-part DLC like the Dh1 DLCs, so shout out to what could have been made if their original pitch had worked.

On locations & antagonists & budget - this dev's site discusses the Conservatory level in game AND specifies it was budget constraints being the reason for cutting off traversable area from that mission. Great link for comparing the original level & the DotO version, especially re: your point about reused assets/levels.

We could pick other examples here but this post is already long so -

Billie herself deserved SO much better than whatever is going on with her character

i would forgive this game anything if there was any good billie storywriting.

:')

its never just the writers

after revisiting articles to fact-check for this essay, i've seen a lot of articles blaming writers by name (you didn't do this anon which i love <3)

games are made by teams, and decision making is generally done top-down, so blaming individual contributors is shit. 1) writer's pay isn't good enough to cop this kind of abuse. 2) it's rarely in their control - you can write a beautiful scene only to have that level cut due to costs (etc), and then you need to work out how to make the story make sense. ideation & decision-making are separate and i guess 'this idea was [X]'s' should not be mistaken for 'this is the fault of [X]'s.'

on hiring fans (& imm-sim writing strategies)

the new writers [...] already had an idea of the world, as they’d seen it from the outside, as fans. “These are all people that knew this world we had created and they took it as canonical, as the gospel. Whereas, for us, it was bits and pieces we’d made up along the way.”

as someone who used to hire writers, and i promise this isn't in bad faith: don't hire fans unless your priority is cost then, sure, fans are likely to put in overtime (and not be in a position in their career where they can ask for higher remuneration - they'll pay the passion tax to be involved).

writers (esp new career writers) have to be open to receiving feedback assuming healthy/functional processes, and being a fan makes that harder because you care more. and, as a fan, you know what loose ends exist and that's where you'll naturally jump to, even though writers should start with target audience and branding, and build from there. if i expand on this i'll get offtopic so let's keep going!

DotO feels lifeless because it doesn't add anything to the DH universe, it only takes away by closing storylines without the satisfaction of closure. sure, stuff was added - the cult subplot, locations, some NPCs/enemies, etc. but they feel like part of the objectives, not part of the dishonored universe. you can feel the decision-making process when you play: there's a feeling that the priority was to finish the assets required for missions, instead of writing a story that feels immersive.

compared to standard videogame writing, where you can generally get away with "everything you touch and read relates to your objectives as the protagonist", as an imm-sim writer, you need to focus on:

how does this text build the universe so that the player feels like they're only seeing a small part of the world?

of course - this is difficult with budget/time concerns. i've said it before but this is part of why we rarely have games as rich as dishonored 1 & 2, because imm-sim design philosophy flies against the current videogame industry trends of microtransactions & cheap-to-make addictive mobile games. given a tight budget you focus on the high level story, but player immersion is a function of details.

most likely, dh2 was the end of an era. typing that out makes me sad.

what did the devs say about writing billie

*breathes deeply*

the death of the outsider protag was originally pitched as being about a regular human, someone not related to emily and corvo but instead an overseer or a brigmore witch. daud was also pitched.

this could have worked! really cool to have a nobody, or a heretic, or an overseer, be involved with the death of a god. and i've mentioned before that storywise DotO's protag could have been anyone (i think i made a joke about wyman? hah) and wouldn't change the story much, bar some daud bits.

quote from the same article:

eventually Arkane settled on Billie Lurk, Emily's companion from Dishonored 2. [...] Bakaba tells me that because Billie had already received her redemption arc in Dishonored 2, Death Of The Outsider's story could be about something more than that.

welp.

so there's two things here - a redemption arc claim, and DotO's actual story.

in addition to not being the first pick, the view was that billie's story was over. i question the 'redemption arc' claim - sure, billie helps the protag in dh2 but after her confession, if you tell her she's changed, she brushes it off and you part awkwardly without forgiving her... does that count? if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? if a character redeems themselves but the story never tells you, are they redeemed?

billie's role in dh2 isn't really that different to the dlcs, where she follows you around being Mr Exposition while withholding a LOT of information that could have actually helped the protag. given DotO's plot, going after the killer who shaped her doesn't scream 'reformed' either. ludonarratively speaking, the lack of chaos implies billie never changed from being a callous killer - which i'm not against, it would have been a cool story.

and! contrast this with daud who already had his redemption arc!

When first conceptualising Death Of The Outsider in around 2014, Smith and Duval knew they wanted two things: Billie Lurk being used to get to The Outsider himself, and closure for Dishonored villain (and later ally) Daud.

in the two DLCs, as we know, he comes to realise his actions sucked, and as the player you actively make things right (related: my post about ludonarrative dissonance in dh2). so if billie had "already received her redemption arc", why was this another daud story?

imo this isn't a budget issue but a misogynoir issue. "we want this story to be not about the protagonist so any random NPC will do, how about we go with billie lurk and get a black woman as a dishonored protag?" this logic, which is what i'm reading of the above two quotes, feels frustratingly tokenistic when she's an established character with a rich background. it's an example of surface level diversity because DotO is not about her by arkane's own admission. it's a similar vibe to the companies who say they have a diverse team but you check their staff page and all the people of colour have 'assistant' in their title and the board is all white, so it's not people of colour who are driving the business. maybe this was entirely by accident but these accidents add up to systematic failure - billie gets her own game but never her own story. it feels like she got assigned the caretaker role for these two guys. great.

for fairness, let's compare to dh2. corvo & emily are relatively hands-off protags in terms of their ongoing thoughts about their surroundings and the lore placement about them specifically is sparse, and this style continues in DotO. the issue is the core narrative: corvo & emily are both the protagonists of their story in the sense that dh2's story reflects their goals ("take back what's yours"), whereas Billie is an established character who has arguably little reason to go along with each mission. worse, the main plotline she's literally forced into going along with. in the opening scene billie gets assaulted and still helps the guy who assaulted her.

fundamentally, DotO's narrative is not about billie but about daud and the outsider, and this article makes clear that was by design.

whats the takeaway

DotO is the weakest entry in the Dishonored series for most people, and blaming budget & a corporate changeover makes me feel... uh well it doesn't really help me tbh but your mileage may vary. it does interest me to think about what we could have had!

for me, my opinion is that if writing billie was a priority (link to my own post where i describe the feeling of playing doto as someone interested in billie) arkane would have made it a priority, even amidst constraints. billie's redemption arc was not resolved imo, and putting her in a game without a chaos system feels like as much a backwards slide for her as daud's plotline to kill the outsider was for his arc.

we absolutely 🤝 on not being in a rush to play the game again.

on the upside. dishonored 2 is a really wonderful game and i love it very much.

#death of the outsider #dishonored #billie lurk #look i dont like to go on even though i think there's a genuine conversation that is almost never had on here #every year there are fewer and fewer fans interested in dh. so i dont want people to feel bad if they like it #you know? its not my priority to be negative. but there's a lot about this game that doesnt sit well.#full disclosure never worked in game dev! but i lead devs and am involved in financials and led writing projects #so my angle is half business. half writing.#im always a bit surprised when people say theyre a fan of a company #the work doesnt happen in a vacuum sure #but people make up that environment #most companies are one leadership change or two bad firings away from releasing crap forevermore #we pretend that's not the case because its hard to sell a business if you cant pretend you have a 'secret sauce'#but realistically that 'sauce' is people (ew) (bad analogy)#its better to see games as art and your relationship to that art as an evolving thing #my relationship to doto is poor and that'll probs always be the case! oh well. other games with billie in!#pres writes essays in tags

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prince-liest · 11 months ago

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Hi, just wanted to say that i love your 666 series, and I'm sure that writing such long and high quality chapters while also having a live outside of it requires a lot of self control so I wonder how do you manage all of this?

I'm sorry, this is probably a very silly question, but I'm just really curious about this 😅

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoy my work - and that you think my stuff is high quality, ehehe.

I think the reality of the situation is less that I have ironclad self control and more that I have 1) experience that makes writing quickly much easier for me now than it was years ago, and 2) long term habits that lower the activation energy required for maintaining appropriate self-care.

That said, it's really funny that I got this ask right as I was bemoaning the fact that I definitely have to drag myself to the gym today over breakfast, hahaha. But, like, let me use that as an example: I go to the gym because I know for a fact that if I don't, I'll feel shittier, and if I do, I'll feel really good, in a purely physical way. I like working out, but I don't like having to go, so I make the 'get ready and go' process more entertaining. Listen to the Hazbin Hotel soundtrack on repeat. Pretend I'm performing android maintenance on the machine I inhabit. Listen to a philosphy podcast that makes me feel smort about vibing with Nietzsche. Put on TikTok while I get dressed. Whatever!

The writing itself is a hobby for me, though, and I am the wrong person to ask if you're looking for tips on how to force yourself to do creative things when you don't want to, because I just don't do that - it tends to be bad for my actual creativity. In fact, I recently declined a couple of zines and stopped applying to them entirely specifically because I want writing to go back to being purely a for-funsies hobby that I do on my own terms, not a chore to fulfill. If I'm feeling it, I do it. If I'm not, I do something else! I already have an extremely demanding career, haha, I'm not bringing that energy to my creative outlet!

#ask #personal #Anonymous #also I have a lot of free time right now because I've matched into residency and am on a very easy rotation (chosen on purpose)#writing speed absolutely falls when I am busy or stressed!#it's hard to have the “discipline” to do something when you don't yet FEEL how much it affects you #and also sometimes it's less about forcing yourself and more about making doing the thing easier

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bmpmp3 · 5 months ago

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i do wish i was better at communicating with people online and through technology. i wander into conversations and make new ones all the time irl with random people and its fun but im like hyping myself to type out a single response to a Post. and to say nothing of how difficult it is to get me to say something in a discord server

#or even video or audio calls are becoming hard for me rn. i used to be better at this #i used to be sooo good at talking to people online. maybe. or maybe not actually #now that i think about it ive always been a little outside of everything in both irl and online communities ive been in #you know i was part of the mods for a deviantart species a long time ago. i was pretty bad at my job i was always too slow to actually mod #and one day i came home from school and like the entire modbase imploded because of drama on a discord or smth they had that i wasnt in LOL #tbh i was a bit older than all of them and busy with final year of highschool stuff so i wasnt super present. i think they just had me on #because while i wasnt particularly popular as an artist i did have some eyecatching polish on my art. but it was wild i was like #whats going on. who are you people. where am i. i have to apply to ouac rn i dont know whats happening #wait random ass deviantart drama i was vaguely adjacent to but still dont really know what happened aside. i would like to chat more #i think the easiest way to converse with me is commenting on my posts like theyre forum threads. or dming me. sometimes #im so bad with group chats. especially if they have multiple channels. the only group chat ive stuck with is a tiny one with like #two other friends and we just write thoughts and about our day and pictures of animals and whatever #i get confused and scared in discords. i get so confused and scared #i used to be okay with discord calls but even with that ive been struggling. am i scared of the computer #am i scared of the computer. the machine. whats happening

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orcelito · 4 days ago

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Had a moment of listening to music I liked back when I was a teenager (& still like) and having a whole. Realization . That I like myself as I am now sooooo much better than I like teenage me. And I started thinking about Why.

There's a lot to it I'm pretty sure, & most of it centers around the fact that I just... didn't really know who I was as a person. I didn't really have hobbies outside of what I did in school (aka orchestra) and like. Video games + anime. I did creative writing in middle school, but dropped off in high school for... some reason? I still made original characters and played around with them a lot, but it was mostly just in drawing and thinking about them. I never actually *wrote*, and I in fact didn't get back into creative writing at all until I was 23 years old. I was someone who had spent so long hiding behind others and just doing what I was told that I just... didn't have any real direction. I didn't know what I even *wanted*. I thought I knew, but in hindsight, I can confidently say that I didn't. I was just an insecure teen drifting through life and not thinking about things beyond what was immediately in front of me. Which is pretty standard for teenagers I guess, but not all of them. Not at all.

Compared to now, where I have Many hobbies, most notably being writing. As I am now, I am just Intrinsically a writer. And it's weird to remember that I wasn't even really *writing* before 5 years ago (besides text rps, which did a lot for developing my writing skill! But still aren't a replacement for writing individually). As a teen, I wasnt into dnd, I was incredibly out of shape, & I was a lot less aggressive and focused. I was the type to avoid sports!!! I hated them!!!! But as I am now, I Love biking and can easily bike for an hour+ no problem (I remember being a teen and trying to go on just 10 minute bike rides in the summer and just *dying* from it), & I love working out. I wanna be strong!!! I LOVE being strong!!! And I was an absolute mess with things like public speaking & working in groups, vs now where I can do an impromptu presentation no problem & I'm often the unofficial leader in group projects bc im typically the one who does the organizing and allotments of work. A side effect of working as a supervisor and then assistant manager for so long. I have a lot more confidence in my perceptions and judgements, & I have the self-assurance to assert these things. And this is only really the tip of the iceberg with all the differences.

I just feel like an entirely different person, almost. The cores are the same, or at least damn near similar, with the things I want out of life & the sorts of things I enjoy, but it's like. The difference between finding a random rock off the side of the road & then that rock when it's been sanded and carved and decorated to be something individual and unique. You look at them side by side and it's something dull vs something shiny and intricate. The origins can't be ignored and dismissed, & I certainly would never resent younger me for just doing the best with what I knew at the time. But it's just astounding how much difference time and experience will have for growing and developing as a person. Things I consider integral to my personhood weren't even thoughts in my mind back then. We are almost entirely different people.

#speculation nation #under readmore bc I just got contemplative. not negative really either.#ultimately it's that kind of thing of like. college & all my experiences within it have done a LOT for developing who i am as a person.#i wouldnt be nearly so comfortable with public speaking if it werent for how many speech classes ive taken over the years.#but it's also the fact that i was working to figure out who i was during college that made me fumble it so hard.#i wanted to be an engineer. can you believe it? i was so CERTAIN of it as a teenager. but it was only really bc of the family i have/had #that are/were engineers. i didnt have personal interest in it. it was just the Thing To Do.#so i got to college and i *hated* it and i had to take several years to figure out what i actually Wanted.#i realized pretty quickly that i wanted to focus on computers after my first coding class. but thats so BROAD #and computer science wasnt for me either. i fucking hated computer science. but computer information & technology??#this is my shit. and honestly it's so weird to remember that just 10 years i knew very little about computers #and now ill be sitting in my web programming class & theyre talking about javascript and loops and such within it #and im just zoning tf out bc Yeah Yeah do while loops ive heard it a million times before. arrays?? yeah whatever i got it #but back in 2016 i had to learn these things for the first time!!! it was entirely new to me!!! teenage me didnt KNOW #so me being a computer person with a specialization in business and hobbies of writing and biking and dnd. i had NONE of those things!!!#i didnt even collect knives!!!!! granted thats mostly bc i Couldnt buy many of them yet + i also didnt have much money lol #bc i never even worked a job until i got to college. that's also unimaginable to me. imagine not knowing what it's like to Work...#i remember getting $500 or so in graduation gifts after graduating high school & my mind was just Blown #had never had that much money before. it was crazy to me. meanwhile with a job paying every other week $500 was a *low* paycheck.#but i also have to pay bills and rent and buy food and all this stuff. also things i didnt have to worry about back then. ALSO weird.#idk theres a lotta bullshit i gotta deal with as an adult but i like who i am now so much better. feel so much more *myself*#than just a directionless teenager waiting for someone to tell them what to do.#it's amazing what 10 years will do for your development as a person. absolutely wild.

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